Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition

XBLA

BAJOAlright Hex, I've actually lost count of how many times we've reviewed Minecraft now, but since it's just come out for Xbox I think it deserves one more look...

HEXNow surely we all know the basics of Minecraft right? You mine stuff, build stuff, explore things and run away from scary monsters. And that's all pretty much the same here. But even so, this version is quite different from its big PC brother.

DARRENThis is actually based roughly on the old beta 1.6.6 PC version so a lot of the more current features are missing. There are no villages, there isn't "The End", you don't have a food bar, you can't sprint, there are no cats, no critical hits, no Endermen. Just to name some of what's missing...

HEXBut much like the PC version this will be constantly updated, and no doubt all of that stuff will find its way into the game eventually. But while it might lack some of the PC features at the moment it has a bunch of great new features going for it. And first off they'e addressed one of our biggest criticisms, because now, there's a tutorial...

BAJOFinally! Minecraft is such a deep game and it can take a good day or two for new players to figure out how everything works on their own. But now you can just do the tutorial and learn all of the basics in half an hour. It's also pretty cool because they've created a special tutorial world which includes a couple of pre-made villages, a castle, and a little rail track. So if you want, you can just stick with playing in the tutorial world and instantly have a big castle you can call home.

HEXAlso since there aren't villages yet in the randomly generated worlds it's the only place you'll find those for now so it's a great starting point.

DARRENAnother big change is the completely revamped crafting system. So instead of having to know how to craft everything in the game off the top of your head, you simply select the item you want to craft from a menu and providing you have all the bits you need to craft it you can just make it instantly. And it highlights any items you're missing so you can easily see what you need to get more of...

HEXYeah it's great, it just simplifies everything and personally I think it's a much better system. I guess there is a certain joy in taking the time to memorise how to craft things but really it's not much fun having to exit the game, go to a website, look up how to craft something and then go back to the game. It always just felt a bit too obscure on the PC so I really liked this.

BAJOThe other great new addition is there's up to four player split-screen. So now you can play with some mates or siblings at the same time and do some local co-op. Or even better, local griefing...

HEXYou also get the option each time you start up your world to make it online so up to seven of your friends can join into your world as they please. It will only allow people on your friends list to join tho so you won't have complete strangers dropping in. But if you want you can set it to invite only which is probably a good idea if you've got a few jerk friends.

DARRENI found the biggest weakness of this version is that it doesn't support the huge amount of user-created content out there. So there're no mods or texture packs. And you can't import any save files from your PC either. That community stuff is a huge part of what makes Minecraft so great. Here you only get the plain old vanilla version.

HEXWell, the developers have said they know how important that stuff is so they're working out a way to allow for custom skins and textures and possibly even mods down the line. So there's hope for that changing in the future. But even so I doubt it will ever match the variety of custom content you can find for the PC version.

BAJOAlso when this was first announced it was said that there would be some kind of Kinect controls as well as cross-platform play with the PC version. And at the moment there's none of that. Some kind of kinect support is definitely coming in a future update but they haven't said what that will be exactly yet. So who knows if it will just be some voice commands or something a bit more interesting.

DARRENHopefully it won't involve pretending to mine... that would get very tiring.

HEXYeah, I'd like it if it let you maybe pose for a photo or something and then import it as a big Minecraft statue of you, which would be cool. But anyway I think they've back-tracked a bit on the idea of cross-platform play with the PC. The last we heard about that the developers basically said since the Xbox version and PC version are so different it isn't likely to happen. But again, maybe if the Xbox version eventually catches up to the same version as the PC, then we could see something happen with that. But at least for now there's nothing there and it's probably safest to assume there won't be.

BAJOBut other than all of that this is very much the same old Minecraft we know and love. They've done a great job tweaking the interface and controls so that it works well on a console. And I know a tonne of spawnlings will love playing this split-screen. It's hard to rate it as highly as the PC version tho considering it's such an old build and it misses out on all that awesome user content. But even so the basics still stack up to be a great game, so I'm giving it an 8.

HEXWell I'd definitely say if you're new to Minecraft or have always just felt a bit lost then this is a great place to start. But if you've been Minecrafting for awhile then unless you're desperate for split-screen you'll want to stick to the PC. Still, it'll be interesting to see how it grows and changes as updates roll out. But just based on what's available here and now I agree, it's an 8 from me too.